Japanese Art Collective TeamLab Is Bringing Its High-Tech Immersive Art Experiences to New York

The insanely popular Japanese digital art collective is coming to the US.

Art from the Digital Art Museum: teamLab Borderless. Photo courtesy of teamLab.

Brace yourselves, New Yorkers. TeamLab mania is coming. Next summer, the incredibly popular Japanese high-tech art collective is coming to Brooklyn’s Industry City in Sunset Park.

The team of computer programmers, animators, engineers, designers, mathematicians, and architects, work together to create mind-bending light installations. The collective opened the first museum dedicated to digital art in Tokyo, and according to the Observerthe artists signed an 11-year lease on a 55,000-square-foot warehouse last month.

“I wanted to pick the best city for more people to come see our digital museum, and that’s when I thought New York,” teamLab’s chief creative officer Takumi Nomoto told Bloomberg.

In an email to artnet News a representative for Pace Gallery, who represent the collective in New York, said “Pace is working closely with teamLab to support the organization and facilitation of an ambitious, immersive, long-term exhibition of their work in that space.”

In the inaugural Brooklyn show, the collective plans to recreate a number of installations currently on view in Tokyo.

In a work called Planets, visitors walk through a maze of dark rooms surrounded by kaleidoscopic light projections that are triggered by motion sensors. Adding to the immersive experience, the installation requires visitors to remove their shoes to feel a variety of different floor textures.

For another work, called Koi Infinity Pond, visitors are invited to wade through a pool of knee-high water surrounded by digitally projected koi fish that turn into flowers when touched.

A third work, titled Floating in the Falling Universe of Flowers, uses mirrors and digital light projections to immerse viewers among falling flower cherry blossom petals.

Nomoto told Bloomberg that he hopes the show will remind viewers of their own mortality: “We imagined it would show guests that time never stops, but just like stars, or flowers in this case, we humans don’t live forever, and life is so precious.”

The last time teamLab showcased their work in the US, at Pace Gallery’s Palo Alto space, the exhibition attracted close to 200,000 people over its 10-month run. The Brooklyn exhibit is likely to generate similar excitement among New Yorkers. Get ready to stand in line.


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